Academy chief predicts Youth Cup cracker

Head of Academy Mark Allen expects an attractive, exciting encounter when City meet Burnley at The Etihad Stadium in the fourth round of the FA Youth Cup.

First-team goalscoring debutant, Marcos Lopes was on the scoresheet for City u18s in their FA Youth Cup third round victory over Sunderland, and Allen is hoping for more of the same this week when the Clarets come to town on Thursday night.

“Everybody is looking forward to the next stage of the season, of course starting with Burnley in the FA Youth Cup,” Allen said.

“In the last round against Sunderland we played really well on the night and it was great to play against a team of the same age-group and the performance was particularly pleasing, hopefully we’ll see the same on Thursday.”

City will face a Burnley side that produced the shock of the third round when they dumped out Manchester United before Christmas, so with that in mind, Mark is taking nothing for granted in the upcoming tie.

“As with every game, there will be analysis taken of the opponents and we’ll prepare accordingly based on that,” the Welshman stated.

“Burnley had a big scalp in the last round and, as is the case in every round of the Youth Cup, we won’t be taking the opposition lightly – we’ll give them the respect they deserve.

“We don’t want to talk about how far we can go in the competition, it’s a cup competition and anything can happen on the night.”

The visiting side took over 1,000 fans to Old Trafford in the last round of the youth cup, so Allen has a message for all City supporters wanting to see the talents at the Academy’s disposal.

We like to play open, attractive football, I think it will be a good level of football and I know that Burnley will be bringing plenty of supporters down, so I hope that the City fans will be out in force at The Etihad Stadium to support our boys too.

...Mark Allen, Head of Academy...

We’ll be bringing you a week of interviews, videos and match previews here on mcfc.co.uk to whet your appetites for what promises to be an intriguing spectacle.